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Application program interfaces, or APIs, are nothing new in the IT world, but over the past ten years, public-facing APIs have risen from a handful to over 10,000. The function of APIs is to add capabilitiies to Web applications and mobile apps, allowing the automation of common processes that interact with services on other machines. APIs, in other words, let programs and websites "talk" to each other, which means APIs allow those programs and websites to provide even greater value to the end users.

Like almost all good things in the world of IT, this raises security questions. When developers create an API, they can also inadvertently open a window to hackers. So this three-part guide looks carefully at both the nature of the security risk and also outlines best practices for managing your organization's use of outside APIs in a secure fashion, as well as making sure that any API's you make publicly available are not opening you up to attack.